Lars Erik Braatveit
TaggartIn which I go full foil hat...or do I?
The plan sounds crazy until you realize how crazy the plan has already been.
João Tiago Rebelo (NAFO J-121)@mttaggart another banger. No full foil hat, but one of the best explanations on how we got here and how we might get out of this spiral. "It's the economy, stupid!" but with C-suites mandates tanking everything to justify their spending of company money (I wouldn't call "AI" an investment).
Pontus@mttaggart It's a golden opportunity for them to win the war on general purpose computing. On a positive note, the whole notion feels very radicalizing, so we might see a lot of computer nerds rebel. "I'll give you my Linux laptop/Gaming PC when you pry it from my cold, dead hands".
Gregly@mttaggart @catsalad I think you are absolutely right. And the tech industry has been trying to do this for a *while* — I remember Sun’s slogan “the network is the computer” back when they were trying to make thin-clients the norm for the average person, accessing Java applications hosted on the web. The tech wasn’t there at the time to make it feasible… but it is now.
And it isn’t just the rent-seeking they’re after. The constant surveillance, censorship, and data collection is an authoritarian wet dream. Look for a lot of “we can’t have the general public have computers, because then they can use unsanctioned LLMs to do bad things with them” arguments in the near future, especially couched in “won’t someone think of the children” language.
su_liam@gregly @mttaggart @catsalad Also, “no soup////computing for you.” That is more powerful than getting kicked from twitter.
luca@mttaggart That's enchanting, but I don't think it's been all planned. The large investments on data centers in themselves, would already be something that you can't replicate locally, not just in computing power, but also in data collection capabilities.
From there on it's just the old advertisement/manipulation scheme, updated with new tools and new invasive methods.
The "new" part is just around fooling users into another addictive and compulsory behavior, to feed the same old billionaries.
From there on it's just the old advertisement/manipulation scheme, updated with new tools and new invasive methods.
The "new" part is just around fooling users into another addictive and compulsory behavior, to feed the same old billionaries.
@luc0x61 From the piece:
That sounds alarmist and conspiratorial, I'm sure. I don't think it's an evil master plan—not a unified one, anyway—but I do think all the incentives and investments are pointing in this direction.
the elder seaHappy side effect that they are 100% leaning into now. Kill all the hated birds.
They never wanted us to have the general purpose computer.
Patrick Loftus 🖖
Ciarán (mc)@mttaggart great blog! No tinfoil required, layer over a big tech desire for fascism and control and this is basically inevitable. The surveillance is baked in. Can't use x or y without a subscription, forced adoption.
The general public are pretty oblivious to the people fighting on their behalf against big tech in courtrooms all over the world, efforts to keep privacy and personal computing alive and dopamine and psychological abuse at fair and reasonable levels.
@mttaggart Unfortunately, there is very little room for tin foil hattery when it comes to rentiership. Every opportunity will be seized. The idea that the push for AI could’ve been entirely for this purpose gives more room for a tinfoil hat, but have you actually looked at the results of genai and heard the claims? It would be hard to be the craziest one in a room full of techbros…
avallach@mttaggart “software developers, please stop sniffing your own farts” Well said!